What are Your Sensory Issues?

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Ah, I can totally understand this! One thing that I truly, truly, truly hate is someone clipping their nails. One time the sound WOKE me up because it was so terrible! I can feel it very deep in my bones! But stepping on hollow ice or on leaves? Lovely!

Issues with lights-
I don't like driving at dusk, either. The half light/dark makes me feel weird nearly dizzy.
Fluorescent lights are horrible the sound and the harsh light give me a headache.
If I am inside a house I cant handle the incoming light...the shades have to be drawn
When i go to restaurants and there is a sconce close to the table, i have to unscrew the light bulb.
Flashing lights and that sort of thing makes me feel woozy and dizzy.
Overcast days are far worse than sunshiny days because the light is more white than orange-yellow.
issues with texture-
... I cant handle scratchy fabrics. I have to wear some scratchy fabrics to work and i am irritated all day til i have a melt down.
i hate restrictive clothing.. long sleeves are not my best friend.
I hate the feeling of my hair touching my neck.
I cant touch wooden spoons EEKKKK.... just typing that made my skin crawl. eek
Dry skin... i cant handle it.

I dont have issues with food texture. although.... i hate salt. it feels like it burns my tongue

Smells... i am very very sensitive to. I can be driving past Wal-Mart and smell people smoking when i am on the main street many many yards away.
perfumes, cleaners, stinky bathrooms... anything really. ick.
EW i hate play-doh. smells horrible ...

My sense of smell is strongly tied to my memory.

oh, my goodness...voice loudness is my biggest problem lately. My fiance has a bad habit of talking loudly.. well its loud to me... i feel like he is yelling. It makes me panicky.
I've always had a problem around my mom's side of the family. They talk so loud i have to hush them all the time.... I'm like "im not saying shut up, im just saying talk lighter..."

Same here. My sense of smell is so strong that it makes me sensitive. Chocolate smell makes me gag, nasty smells like weird BO make me gag, dead flesh [there‘s a lot of road kill where I live, mainly deer] makes me gag. Yep, everything. Smells I love? Lingering garlic on my fingers. I could sniff my fingers for days…



Thank you! Cheesecake is the worst! I love cream cheese, but ugh….cheesecake. Somewhere out there, someone that knows me has a large list of foods that I cannot eat.



A loud computer will prevent me, but a very, very gentle hum with sooth me! However, falling asleep is not really an issue for me when it comes to noise. I once fell asleep during my schools pep rally. On the stands…In the front.
And when I was young, when ever my mother would braid, wash, or brush my hair, it always made me go RIGHT to sleep. If someone plays with my hair today, it’s like playing with a baby. I just go gaga…


Oh my goodness, kids thought I was strange when I was young because playdoh used to make me gag — and one time it made me vomit! I never could play with it until fairly recently, and even now…the smell is just…ugh.

And I’m sorry, but I totally laughed out loud when you talked about wooden spoons. Please forgive me. I thought it was cute.

In order of worst first:

Foul smells;

1) rotten meat/dead animal
2) cigarette smoke/cooking smoke
3) unbathed people/B.O.

Sounds;

1) squealing, beeps or tones in the 10kHz to 12kHz range
2) any sudden burst of sound

Light;

Any flashing or flickering bluish or white L.E.D. flashlights or car lights

These things are intolerable, and I have to stop what I'm doing to get away from them. Other sensory offenses aren't so bad that I can't deal with them like any NT, I guess.

Charles

Let's see if I can remember them all...

Visual: Walking around town is hard especially when it's busy. My eyes dart from person to person and shop to shop and it gets disorientating and often stressful. I have a problem with reading, like my eyes are reading the words but not taking in what's being said at the same time, so I have to read very slowly or else several times over before I'll remember any detail from what I've been reading. The one time I got hyperfocus when reading, I ended up reading 116 pages in a couple of hours and then going into meltdown! I don't like stopped escalators either. I have trouble with big TV screens or cinema screens where I can only watch one item/character at a time because the screen is too big and I miss other details. I still enjoy the cinema and I'll get the storyline, but I have to be no closer than the middle seats.

Touch: I'm most sensitive to light touches. It's really hard on my boyfriend because he has to be careful about the way he puts an arm around me or sits beside me etc. I'm fine with firm touch, but light touches are torturous. It's like being ticklish to the extreme. I hate when people/hair/clothes/bedsheets/ touch my neck especially, which adds to sleeping problems and makes me slow to get dressed. I'm very temperature-sensitive and am almost always too hot or too cold.

Auditory: I can't make out what people are saying to me if I'm in a pub. I can't cut out the sounds I don't want or need. I hate high-pitched sounds, sudden clattering sounds, metallic sounds, clashing sounds such as TV and someone talking to me at the same time. I like quietness and control over the sounds around me. I'm very easily distracted by sounds and it gives me trouble in exams. My left ear is more sensitive to high pitches and my right ear is more sensitive to low pitches, so when I'm at the cinema or there's loud noise coming from speakers somewhere, I plug my left ear a lot!

Smell: Smells are really hard for me to cope with. I hate unnatural smells, e.g. the smell inside any car (even with an air freshener), the smells inside buses, the smell of exhaust fumes (even mild ones), the smell of fuel, most perfumes, mingled smells of sweet and savoury foods at the same time... I am always travel sick unless I go in a plane or perhaps on a very clean train and I believe that smells are the main cause, combined with motion. I have to breathe through my mouth and/or through a scarf when I'm in town.

Taste: I absolutely hate if gravy or something else like a sauce or some other mushy savoury liquidy stuff gets into my veg. I won't eat the veg touching that, there'll be a wonky line of uneaten spoiled veg left over! I hate the taste, but even if the taste isn't too bad together, I won't eat it because I wasn't expecting to eat the veg like that and it feels very much like it's spoiled completely when it mingles with what wasn't meant to be on it. I almost always eat one food type at a time, e.g. the veg, the meat, then the potatoes/rice/whatever else is there. Generally, though, I don't have a problem finding foods that I like. I really love food and there are lots more foods that I like than that I don't like.

If two or more of the above clash, e.g. something that's bad for me visually and something that's bad for me aurally happen at the same time, I'm likely to feel nauseous or dizzy/disorientated, and it's easy for me to hit meltdown.

Yes, it's impossible for someone to put their finger near my neck. Unfortunately, ticking is a strange subject that is psychological. Tickling is actually a violent attack on a person. A person can walk up to you on the street and begin to tickle you, but humans respond violently because it is a stranger. However, because we may be familiar with a certain person, tickling will not be taken psychologically as an attack, so the body's natural defense against it is to begin laughing. When I was young, my father didn't understand that just because I was laughing because he tickled my neck didn't mean I was amused. It highly frustrated me and afterwards I would cry violently in private. No one can touch my neck because it's an absolute NO NO area. A friend's bird crawling towards my neck results in violent reactions toward the poor thing. I hate necklaces so I will rarely wear them.

However, light touches are different for me, especially when it comes to hair. I enjoy feeling light, peachy facial hair on my cheek. It tickles my tongue and the roof of my mouth pleasurable. As a result, I enjoy holding infants because their eyelashes and hair sets my whole being afire. When I was younger I used to think that I had a pedophilic attraction to infants because of that reaction, but I realized that it was completely sensory...

And whenever someone [usually a man] with hairy arms rubs his arm against mine by accident, I have to fight myself and literally resist rubbing my arm against him in response. When he apologizes and I respond, "It's okay..." he does not understand that I really mean, "Oh, goodness, it's perfect. Please do that again. And again. And some more..."


I failed my SATs twice because I couldn't concentrate on it. There were subtle sounds everywhere that distracted me, and I couldn't 'zone out'. The failures upset me because I knew I was intelligent, but my score was not showing this. Had I but known back then...


I love those smells, actually, except for the exhaust fumes and perfumes. However...I could sit at a gas station all day and smell that petroil...



Once again, opposite. If I could, everything involved with vegetables and broth could just be a creamy, unidentifiable soup. I can't stand vegetable, watery soups, but I love creamy ones. My father used to hate when I would take the soup he worked so hard to make, with delicious, delectable vegetables, and then throw it in the grinder so it was some unidentifiable amalgamation. He took it as offensive...

Sounds: The worst is when there are a lot of different sounds at once. Even if it's just a few people talking at the same time, it's really overwhelming. I can't tune out so-called background noise. I also hate loud or high-pitched sounds in general. Some of the specific sounds I don't like: metal on metal, hands rubbing together (this is also a tactile problem), paper rubbing together, when people touch cardboard, fire alarms, brass instruments when they're too loud, and the humming noise computers and stuff make.

Touch: Palms or fingertips rubbing against each other, light touch, heat, humidity, being hugged (which I can tolerate so long as I know the person and there's actually some meaning behind it instead of just a greeting or something), cardboard, newspaper, any kind of paper right after I've washed my hands. There are also a lot of food textures that bother me. I have a problem when there are a lot of different textures in one bite, like in most sandwiches. I also don't like it when food with a mushy or soft texture has a spicy taste.

Smell: Weirdly, I seem to process smell normally. Which makes me think some of my sensory problems have to do with the thalamus, which deals with every sense except smell.

Taste: Since a lot of taste perception is actually smell, and I don't have smell sensory issues, my sense of taste is pretty much fine. Most of my food issues come from sensitivities to texture. I think I am sensitive to taste, though - like, when I eat a plain hamburger (just the bun and meat), I think that has plenty of flavor and complexity. But most people think that's bland and boring.

Vision: As with sound, I can't filter out background information. When I go somewhere that has a lot of different things to see, I feel like I'm bombarded with everything. Vision sends me into a shut-down faster than any other sense. In particular I'm sensitive to flashing lights and loud carpet. I don't like really bright light, but dim light is the absolute worst.

I always had horrible test scores because of the humming, clicking, tic-toc of clocks, sound of pencils writing on hollow desks... eek... people sniffing...

Teachers are like .. Well you know the material in class and raise your hand on every question.. were you just not prepared for the test? AHH! I need silence. and need to be away from the cursed fluorescent lights.

Noises are weird for me.... a few nights ago i was on this forum reading what people have been saying and my fiance knows that i wont hear him speaking if i am zoned out so he will start rattling things and clicking pens and it pops me back into reality...

I usually have to cover my ears up if there are loud sudden noises. or else i will crumble and feel like i am about to cry....

Are sensory issues variable according to circumstance? When I am hyperfocused on something, you could set off a nuke and I wouldn't hardly notice (thinking "ooo ... that tingles" as I am flashed into ash) and other times if a branch is ticking against the house in a breeze the noise sounds like a truck in my head.

I think they are. When I'm playing piano, there can be an argument going on in the house, someone watching television the next room over, and it will not faze me. But as soon as I hear the floor creek behind me, I'm on edge and can't continue.

mostly touch

I am hyposensitive to taste and I love to dump a bunch of seasonings on my food.

I am very, very sensitive to texture of clothes and I don't like tags. I only like to wear yoga pants and really soft tops/hoodies.

I also have hard time with touch because for some reason I am VERY ticklish.

Same here with the lights.

I also have issues with repetitive noises (they kind of stress me out), and repetitive touches (like scrubbing my hands, or water hitting me in the shower, or...god forbid...someone rubbing my back...YUCK) lol

My sensory issues are fairly minor - more of a nuisance than a real hindrance. But they are still frustrating sometimes.

Taste: I'm hypersensitive to hot spices - hot pepper and black pepper. I've never met someone with as extreme a spice sensitivity as mine, though I wouldn't be surprised to find someone on here. It usually catches people offguard that I have the same reaction to black pepper (even in small quantities) as I do to hot pepper.

Sound: I'm mildly sensitive to loud sound. Mostly it's not a problem; I cover my ears when emergency vehicles with sirens go by, and I avoid places where there is loud music, and that mostly takes care of it.

Touch: My skin is very picky about what kind of fabric it touches, but I'm not sure whether that's a sensory issue, or a result of my eczema. I always attributed it to eczema until I realized that it could also be a sensory thing. I tend to have a startle reaction when people touch me, but I don't mind touch when I'm expecting it, so that seems like it's probably not a sensory issue.

I don't think I have any sensory issues with smell or sight - well, a previous poster mentioned that they needed absolute darkness when sleeping, and I similarly need extreme darkness at least to fall asleep - I use a combination of curtains to block the light from outside and an airplane eye cover to block what the curtains let in. Maybe that counts.

All my senses are shot. The worst is auditory. It drives me crazy! Sometimes I don't want to and can't be around people or modern technology.